Tea and Crackers...

 

©2001-2007 -- Gail M. Hayes

 

As far as the east is from the west, so far has

He removed our transgressions from us.

Psalm 103:12

 

These days, I see God's love in the smallest things. One morning, while listening to music, I marveled as my then two-year-old daughter worshipped the Lord. She blew on her toy clarinet, moving with the music, caught up in the wind of God’s power. It was beautiful. The Lord immersed me in the flood of His love with my baby. Watching her, it was hard to believe that not so long ago, the thought of having a child made me cringe.

 

As the oldest of seven children, the last thing I wanted was a child. My job was helping my mother with my siblings. I felt emotionally tired most of the time. When I expressed my feelings, I was told to “suck it up” and move on. This put a stranglehold on my heart and I became a walking sack of emotional deadness. I buried my emotions so deep that it would take years to recover them.

 

As a young adult, all I wanted was freedom. I wanted nothing to do with a family. I wanted to find me. While searching for myself, I found value in the wrong place. Without warning, my freedom collided with my selfishness. Unmarried at age twenty-two, I discovered that I was pregnant. Without any second thoughts, I decided to terminate the pregnancy and remove the parasite from of my body.

 

Yes, I called the life growing within me a parasite. I did not know God and felt sure that He did not know me. To me, He was just that White man on the picture with the lambs under his arms. I also hated myself and everyone else, so how could I feel anything for a child?

 

When I entered the clinic, the counselor was all too happy to explain that this was not a human life but merely a glob. This would be a simple procedure, she said. She took my money and covered my fear with smiles and undressed me with deceit. I submitted myself and this “glob" to the abortionist's hand. Afterwards, they served tea and crackers. I ate, not realizing the high price I would later pay for that snack.

 

I felt relieved as I exited the clinic. I moved back home, hoping to start a new life. Shortly after arriving, I discovered I was pregnant again. This time, things were different. The pressure was such that I could not expose my condition without risking my sanity. I stood in two worlds. I was an adult in age but because I returned home, I lived as a child. I could barely survive emotionally, so how could I think of having a baby? 

 

Again, I went to the abortionist. This time, something went wrong. The equipment stopped during the procedure and made a gurgling sound that reminded me of a water vacuum that tried to swallow a mouse. Something or “someone” jammed the machine. I felt intense cramping and tried to sit up but the nurse slammed me back down on the table but not before I saw the doctor’s bloodied wrists. As they escorted me to my recliner, I put my hands between my legs to catch my violated uterus just in case it decided to fall out onto the floor. Like the baby I had just killed, the experience left me dead. The results of this visit were a suicide attempt and a deep self-loathing I would be unable to shake for decades. This was payment for the second helping of tea and crackers.

 

That night, I slept hard. Hard enough to swallow the sights and sounds of what I experienced and hard enough to become a hard, new me. The next morning, I felt victorious. I had suffocated my pain and any motherly feelings I had with my pillow. I was now free to embrace the numbness that now occupied my emotional plane and encased me in a cocoon of perversion, anger, and silent screams. I would find no relief from this place until I discovered the miraculous gift of salvation.

 

I eventually left home and became a law enforcement officer. It was a profession in which I could have lost my life but instead, I found it. It was during my time in law enforcement that I discovered the miraculous. I discovered Jesus. It was also during this time that my husband found me.

 

We were both military brats so we left law enforcement and he joined the military. The military sent us to Germany where I discovered that I had a physically closed womb. My doctor told me that my body had protected itself from my previous trauma and a membrane now covered my cervix. She recommended surgery. Since she wanted the surgery, that meant that I had to tell my husband about the abortions I had before I met him. I did not tell him before we married for fear that he would not want me. That evening, I prepared myself for what I thought would be the end of my marriage.

 

After hearing the details, my husband wept. He wept not because of the abortions but because he felt sad that I hid them and me from him in shame. He told me that God had forgiven me so that I must find a way to forgive myself. He also said that if God closed my womb, then He would open it. I rejoiced  out of fear, although I knew in my heart that he wanted to be a father.

 

Many years later, on the day after my fortieth birthday, I decided that I was tired of dancing with fear. Since my husband wanted children, I put aside my selfish desires, fell on my face, and asked the Lord to open my womb.

 

After eleven years of barrenness, within two months of that prayer, I discovered I was pregnant. At age forty-one, I gave birth to a beautiful son. But God was not through with me even then. At age forty-three, God gave my husband and me a daughter. Tears of unspeakable joy fill my eyes when sweet arms encircle my neck. With each hug, fragments of yesterday’s torment vanishes. With each kiss, healing balm fills my once broken heart.

 

This is His love. He restored everything taken by my past. He shined His light on the hidden treasures in my soul and gave me a future and a hope. He enveloped me in His love and washed me in His awesome forgiveness. He anointed me with oil, draped me in royal robes, and placed a crown upon my head. I am His daughter, a daughter of the King.

 

Because of His mercy, I stand unashamed of my past. I pray for those caught in abortion’s deadly trap. I pray that like me, they will one day stand in the flow of God’s love and not consume another snack of tea and crackers.

 

 Today, I stand waiting to wipe fear’s crumbs from hurting mouths and dry lips dripping with guilt’s tea. I stand waiting to straighten crowns tilted by life’s circumstances and to love someone into the kingdom.